Ecosystems
• Habitat- An environment that provides the things the organism needs to live, grow, and reproduce.
• An organism obtains food, water, shelter, and other things it needs to live, grow, and reproduce from its environment.
• Organisms live in different habitats because they have different requirements for survival.
• Write a few sentences describing the habitat of your favorite wild animal.
• Biotic Factors-The living parts of a habitat.• List five to seven biotic factors in a whitetail
deer’s habitat.
Abiotic Factors
• Abiotic factors are the nonliving parts of an organism’s habitat.
• Includes water, sunlight, oxygen, temperature, and soil.
Levels of Organization
• Populations- All members of one species in a particular area are referred to as a population.
• A species is a group of organisms that are physically similar and can mate with each other and produce offspring that can also mate and reproduce.
Levels of Organization
• Community-All the different populations that live together in an area.
• List as many species within a forest ecosystem to define a community.
• To be considered a community, the different populations must live close enough together to interact.
Ecosystem
• Ecosystem-The community of organisms that live in a particular area, along with their nonliving surroundings, make up an ecosystem.
• The order of organization within an ecosystem from smallest to largest: Organism, which belongs to a population that includes other members of its species, population belongs to a community of different species, and the community and abiotic factors together form an ecosystem.